Nation Broadcasting buys Rock Radio Scotland

Rockscot Ltd, the company which won the latest FM radio licence for Glasgow and West / Central Scotland, has been acquired by Nation Broadcasting.

This will be Nation’s first venture in Scotland and the company has confirmed to RadioToday that they will launch a service “from Glasgow in Autumn 2018”.

The people behind Rockscot including Ciaran O’Toole and Paul Mcmanus, have left the board in the last few weeks.

The test stream for Rock Radio says it will launch on 96.3 FM later this year, and has until October to launch under Ofcom guidelines.

Rock Radio was described by the original applicant as a station which will play the best of local, national and international guitar-based music from across the years, with a playlist heavily driven by supporting the live music scene in Glasgow, be that bands breaking on to the scene in pubs and clubs right through to the major artists playing Hampden and the Hydro.

You can pretty much bet what’s going to happen now. The service will launch as Nation Radio and the only local programming will be the breakfast and drivetime shows. All other programming will come from Wales.

The unanswered question is though, why have Ciaran O’Toole and Paul Mcmanus left?

Apparently there won’t be any programme sharing to start with but maybe it will be run like Thames Radio with voicetracking at certain times and non-stop music at others without a local studio?.In The end you would imagine they would want to run the same output on the two Nation stations but surely local voices would be needed to have any chance of success in Scotland voicetracked or not.

Really shocking that Nation Broadcasting has suddenly stepped in and taken over the RockRadio 96.3 station. Does this mean the station when it does come on will no longer have studio’s based in Glasgow just as RockRadio 96.3 had, and that it will not be a rock station, and just networked from London.
What type of station does Nation Broadcasting now plan to start?

Not from London Alan-from Wales with news from a hub in Leeds,Can’t tell you whether there will be a studio in the Glasgow area or whether they will run it as a rock station but if it’s anything like their other stations they are very keen on running the same programmes on different wavelengths (with local what’s ons,adverts,voicetracked local id’s etc).If it’s to be called Nation like the Welsh station it would make it easier to run the same programmes in the different areas especially when the restrictions re types of music broadcast are lifted (not that the Welsh station is the rock station it used to be anymore following a series of changes agreed with the regulator).

May be wrong but would expect voicetracking and networking with the Welsh station and the news to come from the Leeds news hub.Forthcoming deregulation will no doubt remove any requirement for rock if the new owners don’t want it to be such a station.